The Fang

When I was a child, one of the most vicious looking tools in my mother’s kitchen was the can opener. It had a pointed end that looked like a fang attached to the end of a wooden handle. My mother’s was very well used, as I remember, as the red paint on the handle was flaking.

I remember her driving that point into the top of a can with a powerful downward blow as if she were stabbing an ice pick. Opening the can that way left an ugly, jagged can as well as a jagged lip. Washing out a can was a hazard as was putting out the garbage.

As I grew up, the technology changed. A new type of opener appeared with a pair of handles. You clipped the sharp edge over the lid, clamped the handles together, and then turned a key that—providing you had caught the lip properly—created a clean curved cut along the top. This version removed the jagged edges, although the tops were still very sharp, but substituted another hazard. If you had not properly caught the lip edge and you applied too much force, you tipped over the can with predictable results. A child was particularly liable to do that. I can remember sending a can of soup like a missile across the kitchen.

I’d forgotten all this until I saw a fang in a shop specializing in antique kitchen tools. There it was among the old cookie cutters with handles on them and the butter scrapers that no one uses anymore. “Do you know what that’s for?” the owner asked me. I looked at him blankly. It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone wouldn’t. He took my look to mean he should demonstrate it. I watched him go through the motion of that downward swing and the sawing that followed. It was all very familiar. I could see my mother doing it all those years ago. I bought the can opener. I had to.

On my way home I felt a little strange that something I remembered and had actually used was now considered “vintage” if not antique. But then I suppose my life is also vintage if not antique. Until I saw the fang, I hadn’t thought of myself as aging. It seems just yesterday that I was young--when I could rely on my mother to take care of the little unpleasant things of life, like opening cans. I suppose that my grandson feels the same way about relying on his parents and me. And that’s as it should be despite the conflicting messages our society gives us about “growing up” and “taking responsibility” while also fighting every wrinkle and sag. We do grow up. Our technologies change. The whole world becomes something very different from what we grew up in. But we don’t always notice until we see something like a fang on the pile of things that are now outdated and worthy only of curiosity. How we deal with that insight, I suppose, is a measure of who we have grown into.

I’m glad that my proud mother didn’t live to see her can opener for sale in an antique shop. The pulse of the universe beat in her veins and she hated letting go of life. I think she would have taken the fang very personally. She would have tossed her head in defiance and said she still had lots of life left. As I have grown older, I respect her more and more. So in her honor I did something to tell her that I now understand as I could not as a child. I went home and opened a can with the fang.